Tag Archives: SEO

Twitter can often be the first place where someone sees your brand online. Whether by a retweet, a hashtag or a search, if someone happens to come across your profile, you want it to be the best representation of your brand as possible. Have your logo and any other usable graphics you have associated with your brand on your Twitter profile.

Branding

It often pays off more to design yourself specific cover photo and background with your company colours, logo and any essential information you want to show off, as it were. Designing a cover photo for your profile using the specific dimensions and size guides will ensure that your image is positioned just how you want it. Remember that a profile image is 81 x 81 px, and a cover photo is 520 x 260 px. Unfortunately the Twitter background isn’t responsive, so how it is viewed will depend on the screen being looked at. Having something simple that represents your brand through a certain colour scheme or pattern will work well on all devices.

Bio

Your bio is also a very important factor, especially when it comes down to whether or not someone decides to follow your account. If your profile appears in a list, then your bio is the main thing people will see, and will inevitably be how they judge you. Be brief, but not too vague. You only have 160 characters to describe exactly who you are, what you do and your style.

To fully take advantage of the bio, you should be aware that words you have written in there will also help you show up on the search engines. If there is a specific term, key word or phrase you want people to find you with, then your bio is a good place to include it. You can also make use of hashtags in your bio as this automatically enhances your search optimisation when someone uses the same hashtag to search with, but these aren’t essential to being found

How do people find you on Twitter?

If someone has searched for your name on Twitter, you want to be the first one to come up.

Your account name, sometimes referred to as a ‘handle’, should be recognisable, easy to remember and relevant to your company. Seeing as you’re only allowed 15 characters, your company name might be too long to have as on your account. The best thing to do in this situation is to come up with a witty and or recognisable abbreviation of your name. Take, for instance, the account pictured below, instead of having @marchofthemermaids, @Mermaids_March is more condensed and still gets across the two main words of the organisation.

Who to Follow

Try not to follow too, too many accounts as this can come across rather desperate. Following more accounts than the amount that follow you is however, very normal and expected, especially for someone who’s just starting out on Twitter. Just keep it in moderation, (say a two to one ratio) and only follow relevant accounts to your cause. Follow people that are likely to interact with you as well, as Twitter can get rather boring if your Tweets just get lost in the over-crowded bustle of a famous account. The purpose of being on social media and creating a presence for your brand is to get seen- keep this in mind when posting and choosing who to follow.

Following local people and businesses as well as influential accounts to keep your feed useful, relevant and easy to communicate with.

Overall, whatever colours, logos and branding you do use and whatever you put in your bio – you should always have one thing at the front of your action plan and the top of your mind: your brand values and your social media objectives!

If you are aware of what you need to do to optimise your Twitter profile, you will understand that in order to manage it successfully, you need a routine. Many business owners just can’t find the time to do it themselves or can’t afford to hire an in-house marketer, which is why services such as our Social Media Management and SEO packages exist!

Some of those who are reading this may have seen a recent documentary from Channel 4’s Dispatches team. The programme investigated the purchase of social media influence from companies in the UK and abroad. Businesses and celebrities who want to build up a following, whether for reasons of appearance or in an effort to boost their search rankings, are able to source hundreds of new fans and followers from overseas with just a few pounds.

In order to show you why it’s a bad idea to purchase so-called social indicators in an effort to bolster your SEO, I’m going to show you what happened to a site of mine. This was actually a deliberate attempt to sabotage it by a competitor. That’s right – buying social indicators is so bad for your SEO that rivals will attack you by doing it!

About the Site

The target was a small, simple local business site. There were a few pages about the services, some photos, and contact information. It was ranking on the first page for its target keyword, between positions 7 and 9. I had set up a Google Plus page for the business (as we all know, Plus is great for your SEO) and things were moving forward.

Then, this happened:

88 new +1s for the tiny local business page, all on the same day. There is no way that these were natural – in their niche, the business would not have that many customers in an entire year. No other SEO work had been done recently, so the following results were purely due to the new influx of +1s.

The business lost its first page ranking for the target keyword, disappearing completely from the results. It has also lost its good positions for secondary keywords. Luckily, it still appears in the local listings and is receiving some traffic that way, so the situation is not as bad as it could be – but can you rely on this?

The Bottom Line

Don’t buy ‘Social SEO’ packages which offer to deliver a set number of ‘real, natural’ fans and followers to your business in a short time period. It will only ever be harmful. Instead, concentrate on creating great content and networking to build a real social base. I Say! Digital can support you in this. Why not give us a call and ask what we could do for your business?

Ask any SEO professional what the most exciting current social platform is and you’ll receive only one answer. The relatively new Google social media site, known as Plus, can be a great way to integrate the search engine optimisation and social media marketing that your business is engaged in. There are a few different ways to approach this.

Hang on – what’s the big deal with Plus anyway?

The key reason why Plus is so important is that it belongs to Google. Google has access to all the information stored on Plus – it can see who’s a member, what they’re talking about, which sites they own, whose content they are sharing, and so on. A great deal of this data is helpful for the company’s algorithms when they are trying to calculate search rankings.

The potential to gather this information from other platforms, such as Facebook or Twitter, is comparatively limited. That’s not to say that those sites aren’t important, or that they have no SEO impact. However, it does mean that if you’re focussing solely on the SEO benefits, and have to pick just one social media site, it should be Plus.

Google Plus Optimisation

Authorship

An example of the way in which authorship is displayed in search results

Authorship is a simple mechanism which is used by Google to, you guessed it, determine the author of a piece of content. The process of enabling authorship consists of two steps – firstly, special code must be added to the content, and then the author must link back to the site from a particular area of the Plus profile.

Giving authorship credit to a content producer could help in either of two ways. Primarily, it lets Google know that a site is being run by real people. It can also help to build your authority as an author. It’s widely believed that Google is going to start calculating search rankings by looking at the author rather than just the content, so this is a great way to get in ahead of the changes.

+1s

It’s no secret that social media signals are taken into account by search engines. As touched upon above, it’s likely that signals broadcast via Google’s own platform will be heavily weighted. When real Plus users endorse your content, especially if they are authorities in your niche, you can be pretty sure that your rankings will improve. Additionally, it’s worth pointing out that sharing your content via Plus will mean that more people are exposed to it, driving traffic to your site.

So how can you get +1s for your content? Well, you could go to any one of hundreds of cheap overseas providers who offer to deliver dozens or even hundreds of +1s for the princely sum of $5. However, we know that fake +1s can have a negative effect on your rankings, so it’s probably best to steer clear of the quick fix.

The best way to attract +1s is to make sure that all of your content is easily shareable. Google themselves provide all the code necessary to insert +1 buttons into your pages. If you’re running a WordPress site, there are also numerous plugins that you can easily install to help you achieve the same aim.

Leave it to Us

At I Say! Digital, we always take advantage of Plus when planning social media or SEO strategies. It’s one of many tools in our box and we’re constantly updating our practices as the landscape evolves. Contact us if you’re interested in learning how we would approach your online marketing.

Along with SEO, inbound marketing is one of the big buzzwords in marketing this year. As Google tightens up its algorithms to prevent manipulation and spam, more and more businesses are turning to inbound marketing to help them generate revenue and get found by the customers who are looking to spend.

In this article, we’ll look at the basics of inbound marketing and define some DIY techniques you can use to create your own campaign today.

What is Inbound?

Marketing techniques can be split into two camps: outbound and inbound. Basically, inbound marketing can be summarised as non-intrusive; unlike outbound marketing, you don’t need to display a huge banner or use a megaphone to get noticed.
Inbound marketing is becoming increasingly popular because of its links with SEO, lower costs and opportunity for creative and dynamic elements. It’s thought of as modern when compared to outbound, although both have their place.

How Do I Get Started?

Here’s a simple summary plan of your first steps in inbound marketing.

Sort Your SEO

Perhaps the most important building block for a good inbound marketing campaign is a well optimised website. It doesn’t just help with search engine positioning. It’ll also make your website contents easier to find, so it’ll complement everything else you do.

Build a Blog

Everyone knows regular content is the key to satisfying the search engines. It’ll also help you build authority in your niche. You can try publishing blogs via social media, posting guest blogs rich with unique content, or even creating videos. Whatever you do, make sure your content offers something really interesting – and publish frequently.

Market With Mail

Mailing lists have a bad reputation thanks to spammy outbound marketing techniques, but an email list is still a very valuable tool. Don’t be scared of inviting people to sign up so that you can build a valuable list of interested leads. Then, offer your email list subscribers value in the form of a discount, some unique content or valuable extras and freebies.

Improve Authority

Once you’ve established your campaign, get your brand name (or your own name) noticed. Write a book; ebooks are great providing you’re willing to give them away for free, but a print book is even better. Build a healthy Google+ profile, spend time networking on LinkedIn and snap up opportunities to get your name and face known. Even if you’re not directly promoting your business, the fact that you’re visible means people are developing a connection with you from afar.

Making the Switch to Inbound

For several years, we’ve been told that advertising is the key to marketing online. It’ll take some time for that to be reversed. The sooner you adopt inbound marketing methods and embrace them, the further ahead you’ll be when your competitors catch on.
The key to developing your inbound marketing campaign is to look for customers and help them to find you – don’t force your message in front of them. Before you know it, you’ll be generating sales leads at a fraction of the price you paid before.

Marketing jobs have changed over the last couple of years. Content strategy is a key consideration for all websites, and marketers have had to hit the ground running and develop new skills to keep up with the ever-evolving world of SEO.

One way to improve your marketing campaigns is to enlist the help of a guest blogger. In fact, guest blogs have become a core part of many large organisations’ content marketing projects, and thousands of agencies now work with freelance writers that provide guest blogs in any given niche.

In this article, we’ll look at how guest blogging could help you in your job as a marketer, and how the risks of guest blogging can be avoided.

What is Guest Blogging?

Guest blogging is the process of supplying top quality content to other blogs on the web. In return for the content, that blog will post a link back to your website.
No marketing specialist would recommend using guest blogging as a standalone project; it has to be integrated with a wider marketing campaign, and it has to be used in an organic way – never forced, never contrived and never as part of a spammy link swap.

Benefits of Guest Blogging

Earning backlinks is great, but there are other benefits associated with guest blogging that will benefit your marketing campaign too. These could include:

Brand awareness across the web

New-found authority on a certain subject

Building trust between consumers and the brand

Associating the brand with quality information that nobody else can offer

Promoting good vibes about the campaign through contests, promotions and other complementary initiatives

As you can see, guest blogging isn’t just about links: it can benefit the brand on lots of levels. Being sensitive to a more holistic approach will serve you well in any marketing job.

Risks of Guest Blogging

Google will continue to crack down on any marketing tactic that it feels is spammy or unnatural. That should always be at the back of your mind when you develop a guest blogging strategy. While the vast majority of guest blogs are of a high standard, there’s still a tendency for some guest bloggers to supply poor content. Quality costs more, but don’t compromise: if you do, it will be a detriment to your marketing plan since it’ll eventually lead to a penalty.
There are a few golden rules that will help you rise above poor quality guest blogs:

Invest. Don’t cut corners by employing sub-standard writers. Go for the best writer you can afford. Cheaper is not better in guest blogging.

Consider your audience. Is the guest blog going to reach the right people, attract shares and promote authority? If not, you’re not working with the right blog publishers.

Are you trying to hit a target or fulfil a quota? Don’t. If it’s not natural, ditch it and start again.

But despite the risks, don’t shy away from guest blogging. In its purest and most genuine form, it’s a valuable tool for marketers. It offers benefits to blogger and publisher, it builds important networks and it provides Google with quality information and original thought on a given topic (which is what it really wants).
By far the most important outcome is the feedback you get from your analytics package. Be sure to track and measure each guest blog you put out there; learn what works, replicate your best efforts and ditch any tactics that aren’t working.